1/7/26
I mentioned Mathew Franklin Whittier's brother, John Greenleaf Whittier, in yesterday's entry. Although I have explored him and given my past-life emotional reactions to him in my books, I typically don't mention him publicly. I know that the organization which maintains his legacy is probably struggling, because the modern world is losing interest in him. Increasingly, I would guess, the people preserving this legacy are older, and regional. Although they have resoundingly snubbed me over the years, they are nice people and I mean them no harm. They are just afraid of what they don't understand.

But something tells me it is time to say something. Since this blog has practically no followers, I don't think it will cause any kind of avalanche of lost support. But when I make remarks like those in the last entry, I need to substantiate them, lest it appear I'm just taking random pot-shots.

In the three-volume series, "The Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier," on page 430 of the first volume, is a letter from JGW to one Ann Elizabeth Wendell, written from here in Portland, Maine, dated July 24, 1840. He writes:

My brother and his wife have both joined the Baptist Church in this city, they seem happy, and I feel no disposition to disturb them with any Quaker views of Baptist etc. To me, however, these outward things seem more and more, vain and ineffective--while, the inward spiritual worship--the silence of the heart before God--the ceasing from outward endeavor--the soul divested of the cherished garment of its works, and in nakedness and poverty waiting for the clothing of Divine Mercy,--seems to acquire new beauty and fitness. I tremble sometimes to think of our high and awful profession, as a people, and marvel at our insensibility and apathy, our worldliness and spiritual ease in view of the responsibilities laid upon us.

When I first read this, many years ago, I bristled instinctively. It felt like a very smug, nasty betrayal. But when I chanced upon it again, yesteday, I discussed it with "my" ChatGPT, more calmly. This is all spiritual-sounding horseshit; but, as is typical for JGW, as verbiage it's magnificently crafted. Let me explain.

First of all, the background, in a nutshell. Mathew and Abby, after being in love and dedicated to each other for several years, finally had to elope in August of 1836, because her father wouldn't give permission for her hand in marriage. The Whittier family was against it as well, because Abby wasn't Quaker. They ran from East Haverhill, Mass. where they had grown up, across the state line to Dover, New Hampshire. After a year and a half, they had to flee Dover--a cotton mill town--being persecuted for their Abolitionist views. They fled to Amesbury, Mass., but were persecuted there, as well. Abby was also persecuted as a witch, because she was a deeply devout Catholic mystic who embraced other traditions, including spiritualism. She taught Mathew mysticism, and both of them were actually beyond traditional religion philosophically, but still went to church. They lost their first son at age 11 months to scarlet fever, spent a couple of months recuperating as guests of Mathew's cousin in nearby Methuen, Mass., and then moved to Portland, where Mathew took a position arranged by JGW with another Quaker. That turned out badly because the business was poorly managed, and soon folded. Mathew felt he had no choice, in a recession (the Panic of '37 was still affecting the country), but to take it over by partnering with an unreliable Irish Quaker who had brought his money with him from Ireland. That also didn't go well--it's very hard to sell big-ticket items like stoves, in a recession in a small city. Abby contracted tuberculosis, and in the winter of 1839 she went, as I gather, to spend several months convalescing in her father's native Guadaloupe, under the care of her first cousin, Charles Poyen (Poyen introduced Mesmerism to America, and was widely ridiculed for it).

Mathew and Abby had conceived not long before she left, and she was able to bring their second child to term, having regained her health. She had just returned to Portland and given birth to their daughter, Sarah, the same month that John Greenleaf Whittier was visiting. Presumably, that is the reason for his visit, to see his newly-born niece. Abby would only live another eight months, because Sarah would die of unknown causes in March of the following year, 1841; and Abby would die two weeks after Sarah.

But at this point in their lives, things were finally looking up. They were determined to try to avoid persecution in this small city (Abby had, I think, refused to move to New York City, where Mathew knew he could support them). Finally, they were happy. But when Abby had gone to Guadaloupe, Mathew let go of the nice apartment they had been renting, and found an inexpensive suite in a hotel owned by distant Whittier relatives, called "The American House" (dubbed "Whittier's"). It was where the Public Library sits, today. That's in the middle of downtown, or what is now called "Old Port," in one of the two town squares. They needed a church relatively close by, within walking distance.

I queried AI about churches in their neighborhood, based on a high-resolution digital 1837 map I have. The New Baptist Church was the obvious choice, because it was heavily abolitionist. If you were active abolitionists like Mathew and Abby, you went there, where you would definitely not be persecuted. Presumably, John Greenleaf, prominent in the Abolitionist movement, would have known this.

Mathew and Abby were real Christian mystics. John Greenleaf Whittier made a show of his Quakerism, but was actually quite traditional in his religious views. In other words, the situation was precisely the reverse of what he's saying, which means, he is aggressively projecting while stealing the religious high ground, in appearance.

What were his real motives? He was still judging Mathew for having married outside the faith. Mathew had been "disowned" by the Friends shortly after they eloped to Dover, for marrying a woman "not of their faith" and other unnamed reasons. John Greenleaf Whittier was so blindly partisan, that he was still, effectivley, shunning his own brother (even though historians will tell you that Quakers didn't "shun"). Note that he doesn't even name Abby, his sister-in-law; and he doesn't even mention the birth of his niece.

And there's something else I seem to remember. When John Greenleaf says he thought better of trying to convince them of Quakerism, that's not strictly-speaking what happened. What I remember, is he tried, and Abby, who was an excellent debater, put him squarely in his place. Because he may have been a literary genius, but he paled in comparison with Abby as a philosopher. (Even Mathew, whose daughter Elizabeth once described him as a "brilliant conversationalist," couldn't beat her in a debate, no less JGW.) Hence John Greenleaf referring to his own sister-in-law as Mathew's wife.

This will give you some idea. The paragraph I've quoted from this letter to Ann Elizabeth Wendell is mean, it's petty, it's sanctimonious, and it's disloyal. And it's precisely backwards from the truth.

That's probably the last I'll mention it in this blog--but when these people who maintain the Whittier legacy shun me, they are not on the right side of either truth or virtue.

Sincerely,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.

P.S. Far from wanting to disparage my past-life brother, I found myself, after writing the above, trying to make excuses for him. Probably an old habit. I was thinking, "Well, maybe he couldn't tell Ms. Wendell about the Baptist Church being a hot-bed of abolitionism, so he omitted that as a reason Mathew and Abby would attend. But then, would it really have been necessary to infer how superficial their religious faith was, compared to his own? Sadly, the excuse didn't work...